Solutions /
ESG consulting

ESG programs built to
survive their first audit

Materiality, governance and program design for companies moving from reactive compliance to a defensible ESG position.
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ESG consulting
120+
Programs designed
18 wk
Median engagement
100%
Assurance readiness at first attempt
From reactive compliance to a defensible position
Overview

From reactive compliance to a defensible position

Most ESG programs begin as a response to a questionnaire. We rebuild them around what is material to the business, then give the governance to match.
Double materiality assessment
Governance and committee design
Policy and control framework
Target setting and roadmap
Supplier engagement program
Board and investor reporting
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Benefits

Why a designed program
beats a reactive one

Six reasons companies that plan their ESG work spend less on it than companies that answer each request as it arrives.
Lower cost to comply
Lower cost to comply
One controlled program answers every questionnaire, instead of a new project for each one.
Emissions actually fall
Emissions actually fall
Material topics drive capital allocation, which is the only mechanism that moves a number.
Independent of the questionnaire
Independent of the questionnaire
A position grounded in materiality survives a change of rating agency or customer.
Incentives and finance
Incentives and finance
Sustainability-linked facilities and grants require exactly the evidence a designed program produces.
Assurance without drama
Assurance without drama
Controls built in from the start make the first audit a review rather than a reconstruction.
Durable commitments
Durable commitments
Targets the operating business agreed to are the ones still standing in year three.
Advice that has to hold up in a room
Why we are

Advice that has to hold up in a room

Every recommendation we make is one we would defend to an auditor, a regulator and a hostile analyst on the same day.
Materiality first
What matters is established from evidence and stakeholders, not borrowed from a peer's report.
Operational buy-in
Targets are negotiated with the people who have to deliver them before they are published.
Documented judgment
Every methodological choice is written down with its reasoning, because it will be questioned.
Handover by design
Programs are built to be run by your team, with the documentation that makes that possible.

ESG consulting has a credibility problem, and it is deserved. Too many programs are a glossary exercise: a materiality matrix drawn in a workshop, a set of targets nobody owns, and a report that describes ambition rather than performance. Investors and regulators have learned to read past that.

Materiality done properly

A double materiality assessment asks two questions: which sustainability topics affect your business, and which parts of the world your business affects. Answering the second honestly is what separates a real assessment from a marketing one.

We run structured interviews with investors, customers, employees and affected communities; we map your value chain far enough upstream to find where impact actually concentrates; and we score topics against financial and impact axes with the evidence recorded. The output is short — usually eight to twelve material topics — and each one is traceable back to who said what.

Governance that holds

  • A board committee with a defined remit, and minutes that show sustainability decisions being taken rather than noted
  • Executive remuneration linked to a small number of verifiable metrics
  • Clear ownership at operating level, so a target has a name against it
  • Internal controls over sustainability data at the same standard as financial data

If your sustainability numbers would not survive a finance-quality control walkthrough, they will not survive assurance either. Build the controls before you build the report.

From assessment to program

The roadmap that follows is deliberately unromantic. Each material topic gets a baseline, a target, an owner, a budget line and a review cadence. Topics where you have no data get a measurement plan first and a target later — setting a target on an unmeasured baseline is how companies end up quietly restating.

Our advisors come from former regulator, investor and operating backgrounds, which matters most in the uncomfortable conversations: telling a management team that a target is not achievable on the current capital plan, or that a claim will not survive scrutiny. That is usually the highest-value hour of the engagement.

FAQs

Frequently asked
questions

Frequently asked questions
Photovoltaic modules convert sunlight directly into direct current electricity, which an inverter converts to alternating current for your site or the grid. Output follows irradiance rather than demand, which is why we model your hourly load alongside the resource before fixing a system size.
Every engagement starts from your own data — interval meter readings, an asset register, or a year of on-site measurement — rather than from a template. The design that follows is sized to your load profile, site constraints and growth plan, and we show you the trade-offs we made on the way.
Advisory engagements usually run six to sixteen weeks. Built projects depend almost entirely on permitting and grid connection: a commercial rooftop can be energized inside a year, while utility-scale generation typically runs two to four years from site control to commercial operation.
Yes. We build the inventory, install the controls, map one data set out to whichever frameworks apply to you, and draft the disclosure itself. We also run assurance readiness reviews so the first engagement with an auditor is not the first time the process is tested.
We build the pathway from your asset register, aligning abatement to replacement cycles so you are not writing off working equipment. We also quantify the residual emissions honestly and help you procure durable removals against them, rather than assuming the last ten percent away.